


Marvelous

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Goodbyes, Hellos, His Last Vow Spoilers, John and Sherlock are kind of idiots, Leaving on a jet plane, M/M, Mary knows, Multi, Mycroft is scandalized, Second Chances, just kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:18:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock sort of screwed up that goodbye before Sherlock left for Europe. Mary feels it necessary to point that out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So, I know that a lot of people who write OT3 stuff have written this before, and so some of the conversations will sound familiar, if you've been reading that. But... isn't that what they'd sound like? So, sorry if some of this sounds tired (already? We just got our last episode last week!), but I needed to write this in order to kind of establish for myself where these three are coming from in the other things I've written and will continue to write about them. 
> 
> Not beta'd or anything, but if I continue to write these, which I hope I can, then I will be on the market for one soon! Drop me a line if you're interested... and thank you all for the lovely notes on my other stuff. I really appreciate your enthusiasm and encouragement! :)
> 
> Enjoy!

“Well, you botched that up good and proper, didn’t you?” Mary observed mildly, slipping her hand into John’s as they watched the door of the jet ascending until it was once more flush with the plane, locking Sherlock away from them for who knew how long. 

“What’re you on about?” He didn’t sound annoyed or confused as he said it, but a weary sort of resignation colored the edges of his words. His eyes never left the plane as he allowed her to entwine their fingers. 

“Well, the last time you sent him off to parts unknown, uncertain of his return, you didn’t even have a chance to get in a good snog first, let alone a profession of your mutual and undying passion.”

That got his attention. John gasped and sputtered, disentangling their fingers and turning to look her full in the face, his expression at once apprehensive and surprised and indignant and terrified. 

“Mary… you know we never—we’re not—I’m not… and he… I love you!” 

She’d watched this battle playing out behind his eyes since she had first seen he and Sherlock lock eyes over an exorbitantly priced bottle of champagne. 

She’d watched the pain and confusion lance through his expressive face as Sherlock folded napkins in the sitting room of 221B, when he’d discovered Sherlock’s early exit from their wedding, on random Tuesdays… she knew John well enough—flattered herself that she knew Sherlock well enough, now—to be absolutely sure that if she left this up to the pair of them, they’d all have died of old age without a word being said about it. 

“John, darling, take a deep breath and calm down before you have a stroke,” she murmured, pulling him back to lean with her against the posh sedan that was still idling on the Tarmac. “There’s not a doubt in my mind that you love me, alright? Hell, after all I’ve put you through, you’d have to just to still be here.”

John arched one silver-blond eyebrow at her—a silent acknowledgement that yes, he was still pissed off over the whole lying-about-her-identity-shooting-his-best-friend-in-the-chest lark—but reached around her shoulders to pull her close, all the same. 

“The question isn’t if you love me or not. Never has been,” she continued, snuggling into his compact warmth as the sun sunk lower in the sky. “But you love him, too, you know.”

She felt John tense beside her, his arm going stiff even as he tugged her more tightly against him—a denial, maybe, of the truth she was observing without so much as a tear of betrayal. 

“I’m not gay, Mary.”

“No kidding, mate. On the question of your sexuality? Scoreboard,” she quipped, gesturing to her distended belly. “I’m not asking you to hop into bed with the whole of Manchester United, John.”

And she would never get tired of scandalizing him. The spluttering sound he made when she’d genuinely shocked him out of that keep-calm-and-carry-on thing he’d perfected to cover up the adrenaline-addicted, decidedly-not-normal bloke she’d fallen in love with was nothing short of adorable. She giggled, and lifted her free hand to pull his face around to meet her eyes. 

“But you’ve been in love with Sherlock—not men, but just the one—for years. You loved him long before I ever came on the scene, John, and I’d have to be an idiot to assume those feelings wouldn’t reappear when he did.” 

In spite of her hand resting gently on his cheek, John was doing everything he could not to look her in the eye. 

“I’d never be unfaithful to you, Mary. You’ve got to know that.”

Well, that was as close to a profession of his love for Sherlock as she was likely to get out of him, in his current state. 

Smiling gently up at him, she guided his mouth down to hers and pressed their lips together. She tried to put all the love, all the reassurance and acceptance she could into the kiss, and maybe he felt it, because his shoulders slowly unknotted as he relaxed against her. His hands brushed against her belly, sliding around her back, tracing nonsense patterns over the soft merino wool of her coat. 

“John,” she whispered as they broke apart and she pressed their foreheads together, “a man can have faith in more than one thing.”

His eyes met hers, the pupils slightly dilated from their kiss, and she felt the lines of his forehead bunch momentarily in confusion. She grinned at him softly, pressing a chaste peck to his pursed lips before stepping back to prepare for the inevitable protests. 

He looked at her for a long moment, and then sighed, shaking his head and smiling ruefully. “How, pray tell, did I find the one woman in the world who, instead of freaking out that I’ve as good as admitted I’m in love with my best mate, is actively trying to make me abandon my principles and shove me into bed with him?” 

She snorted at that, rolling her eyes—but she couldn’t suppress a smug smile of triumph. He’d actually said the words that time: I’m in love with my best mate. 

She’d known they’d get there, eventually. 

“John Watson, your principles are the things—along with your frankly delectable arse—that made me fall for you in the first place. But you’re trying to pretend that you’re normal, love. And I’m here to tell you that I sure as hell wouldn’t have married you if you were anywhere within ten city blocks of ‘normal.’ And you only love me because you’re anything but.” 

He opened his mouth to retort, but promptly clamped it shut again when she raised one eyebrow, daring him to contradict her. 

“And if you don’t believe that, darling, think about this: Sherlock detests normal people. Doesn’t even notice ‘em, unless they’re dead or selling him chips. And yet he jumped off a building to keep you alive. He faked his own death and deprived himself of the only real friend he’s ever had for two sodding years because he thought it would be safer for you not to know. And then he stood beside you as you married someone else, because he was convinced it was what would make you happy. If you don’t trust anything else, trust that, John. The normal rules can’t apply to you, because you. are not. normal.” 

She reached out again for his left hand, which hung limply at his side as he stared at her incredulously. She pulled it to her lips and kissed it, brushing deliberately across his wedding band and smiling at him from beneath her eyelashes. 

“And guess what, Dr. Watson? Neither are the two people you’re in love with, so that’s all right. Sod normal; normal’s boring. Fuck the rules, John. We none of us play by them, anyway.”

By the time she’d finished this little speech, John’s eyes were as wide as she’d ever seen them, and he was breathing as though he’d just run a mile. But his thin lips twitched in what she recognized as a smile, and the hope that flared behind his eyes made them bluer and more alive than she’d ever seen them. 

Then, on the Tarmac behind him, the jet was roaring loudly into life and beginning to taxi slowly toward the coolly glowing blue lights of the nearby runway. 

The setting sun was turning his hair to a halo of gold as his head turned quickly toward the sound, that familiar pain flashing through his eyes again as he watched the plane gather speed and leave the earth—the opposite of falling, maybe, but no less painful a goodbye. 

John’s face, illuminated by the last pale light of the sunset, twisted in such excruciating sorrow that Mary actually gasped at the sight of it. His eyes were clenched shut, his knuckles white where his hands were bunched into fists. The choked-off sob that ripped itself involuntarily from his throat as the plane soared higher and higher away from them dropped her heart right through her stomach and onto the pavement below. 

Bugger. 

“Oh, John,” she cried, rushing toward him and pulling his head down to her chest, fingers buried in his hair, “I’m so sorry, love. I have such shit timing. Christ, of all the stupid things to—“ 

“No,” he gasped, shaking his head forcefully as he pulled back to look at her with damp, reddened eyes. “No, Mary. Don’t apologize. You’re brilliant.” And he kissed her once again, his lips tasting of salt. “Better to know, I suppose. Now maybe I can get my head ‘round all this so that when he… if he…” But he couldn’t finish the thought, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently as he swallowed down the tears she could see ripping at his throat. 

Because neither of them was an idiot. John was a battle-hardened combat veteran and she was a trained assassin, and both of them could see “six months undercover work in Eastern Europe” for the euphemism it really was. Both of them knew the chances of Sherlock returning to them alive.

Shit. What had she been thinking? 

Mary was a fairly levelheaded woman. She wasn’t given to flights of fancy. She did what was required of her, thought through every eventuality, and tried to always accept the consequences of any move she made—good or bad. 

But when Sherlock had called her “my girl” tonight, and kissed her on the forehead while pressing his hand protectively into her abdomen, it had solidified something for Mary that she’d been attempting to ignore for months. The way her cheeks got warmer as Sherlock pressed up behind her to read over her shoulder as they sat in a sea of wedding details in 221B. The tiny, fluttering swooping of her stomach when he looked at her like she'd surprised him. The wrenching, frigid horror when she'd heard his voice behind her, the gun leveled and steady at Magnussen's head. The uncontrollable sobbing when she had finally gotten home that night, clutching her phone and waiting for John's call from the hospital. 

She'd hated the weakness of his voice in her ear as she walked down Leinster Gardens-- hated the stabbing guilt that warred with the shame of disappointing him. Of lying to John, for whom Sherlock had sacrificed so much. Of sitting before the two of them in 221B as they regarded her impassively from their armchairs, looking for all the world like the seamless unit they'd been before her, and feeling so unbearably alone. 

And then he'd killed a man for her, and told John to give her his love. Then, he'd given her back the possibility of a life with her beautiful, mad, brilliant husband, unthreatened by the demons in her past. He'd been sentenced to a violent, lonely, certain death for his pains, and as he was leaving he'd kissed her and called her "my girl" and told her to keep John in trouble and she just couldn't help the wishful, wistful stab of longing that had made her force John's realization at the worst possible moment on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, they could make this work-- the three of them. 

And now she'd hurt John so badly, and Sherlock almost certainly wouldn't come home to them, and her heart was breaking two times over as she clung to her husband and bit back her own despairing sobs. John's fingers dug desperately into her shoulder blades, and she realized with searing, stabbing certainty that it wasn't only John and Sherlock who'd been avoiding this particular epiphany.

Jesus. She was as bad as both of them. 

A car door slammed somewhere close by, startling Mary back into the present. Mycroft Holmes was striding toward the place where she and John were embracing, the look on his face as purposeful as it was coldly, dispassionately murderous. 

Drawing John unceremoniously away from her by the elbow, Sherlock's brother held a phone up for her husband's inspection, the tinny speakers repeating over and over again: "Did you miss me? Did you miss me?"

John's jaw clenched convulsively, but a look not dissimilar to Mycroft's had settled firmly onto his face. He beckoned her over, the tears still drying on his face, though they had no place there, anymore. He held the mobile so that she could see the screen-- could see the cold, black, terribly familiar eyes staring out at her. 

He was dead. 

It couldn't be. 

Impossible. 

John's face was not hard for her to read. His eyes were still, his expression neutral-- but he was preparing himself for battle. He answered her bewildered questions in clipped tones, not sure-- how could he be?-- how such a thing as this might happen. Again.

"But he'd better wrap up tight," John was saying, his eyes snapping, ice-blue and focused. 

"Why?" It was the only thing she could think to say, still so dazed from the rapid-fire clutch of emotions she'd been pummeled with (though not involuntarily, it was true...) in the last 30 minutes.

"There's an east wind coming."

The air was full again of the roaring, mechanical howl of the small jet that had left only minutes before as it touched gracefully down and coasted to a halt fifty yards from where they stood. Mary's stomach was suddenly full of writing snakes. Because she hadn't anticipated facing Sherlock so soon after... whatever it was that she'd just realized. Her heart clenched unpleasantly even as her mind filled up with ringing joy that she and John might get to keep him-- that they had somehow been spared the heartache of this great shared loss.

Turning her eyes once again toward John, she saw him looking at her with a tenderness that momentarily took her breath away. He smiled softly and grabbed her hands, pulling her close to him and burying his face in her neck. She sighed, slightly bewildered, as he kissed up and along her jawline, finally reaching her mouth and kissing her deeply, seriously, before breaking away and brushing his thumbs across her cheeks.

"Thank you," he whispered, pressing their foreheads together again. He smiled at her once, a hint of mischief sparking in his gaze as her eyes flickered to the dark-haired figure she could see descending the stairs of the plane, tugging the collar of his ridiculously posh coat up against the cooling nighttime air. 

"Mrs. Watson, I do believe your eyes are wandering."

Now it was her turn to look at him with uncertainty and hope warring in her eyes. Searching his face for any hint of betrayal or revulsion, she found only that mischievous good humor that appeared as her eyes followed Sherlock across the Tarmac. 

"Can't say that I blame you, Mare-- he just seems to have that effect on mad people."

"You love him," she whispered, her eyes flickering between John, who was watching her with wicked amusement, and Sherlock, his voice inaudible behind the noise of the jet as he conferred with Mycroft twenty feet away. "How could I not, when you do so much?"

"Like you said: fuck the rules. We've never played by them before; why start now?" And he grinned widely at her and pecked her quickly on the lips before turning at the sound of expensive dress shoes striding toward them. 

"Hello, again," Sherlock's deep voice sounded slightly uncertain as he reached the pair of them. "John, it appears that the ga--"

John did not shy away from it. One of the things that she loved about him was his inability to waffle. Once John Watson made a decision, that was the decision and be damned to the consequences. It was what, she was sure, had brought him back to her at Sherlock's childhood home, in spite of the madness and dishonesty she'd brought with her into his life. It was what made him a great soldier and a better doctor-- the single-minded tenacity with which he took on any task he set his mind to. 

John's hand did not shake at all as he brought it up to burrow in the back of Sherlock's dark hair and abruptly stop Sherlock talking, his eyes flashing uncertainly between John and Mary. Nor was there anything but calm surety in John's face as he pulled the taller man's mouth down to his own. 

From her vantage point, Mary watched Sherlock's eyes widen for a moment and find her, the fear in his face fading to mere shock as she winked at him and settled back against the sedan to enjoy the show. 

He blinked at her rapidly for five seconds before his eyes slammed shut and his hands scrabbled desperately for purchase anywhere on John's body, frantic to pull him closer. John responded in kind, and she watched as the two of them kissed for all the times they hadn't. For the handshakes and the quiet meeting of eyes that had always been meant as so much more. 

As they broke apart, both breathing heavily, John's eyes found Sherlock's and held them, glittering with affection and joy and relief and trepidation and a thousand other subtle flickers of feeling that she couldn't identify, though she was sure Sherlock could. 

They didn't even seem to notice her at first-- at rest in each other, finally, after years of resisting the inevitable-- and she didn't try to attract their attention. Instead, she began walking away from the car that would take the two of them back to 221B, towards Mycroft, who was standing next to the other elegant black sedan and trying valiantly to gain back control of the muscles in his jaw. 

"Mary!" 

She turned at the sound of his voice to see Sherlock jogging towards her, leaving John to lean against the car and smile softly at the pair of them, relaxed and confident and happy. 

Sherlock reached her and skidded to a stop inches away from her face. She always delighted in being one of the few people in the world who could confound him into wordlessness, and the dazed, slightly lost look on his face brought a grin to hers so happy that he couldn't mistake her meaning. The fear disapated from his eyes, and he simply looked bewildered-- breathless, and speechless, and incandescently happy-- but bewildered, all the same. 

She felt her smile soften into something deeper, and reached up to pull him close, brushing a sweet, lingering kiss across the corner of his mouth. 

"Go," she whispered, feeling her breath stir the soft hair of his temple. "Settle it between the two of you, and take your time. I don't want to see either of you until at least Sunday night, and if you don't both look thoroughly, blissfully shagged, I will be very much put out." 

He pulled slightly back from her, and again she allowed herself a brief moment of glory in her ability to leave Mr. Punchline speachless. His eyes searched her face, and then his bewilderment broke into a wondering smile as he bent low again and kissed her, tentatively, with lips that tasted like John. 

"Mary Watson," he murmured, brushing his lips through her hair as he pulled her in as close as her belly would allow. "You are a marvel."

"That I am," she quipped, kissing his neck where it emerged, long and white, from his scarf and coat. "And when you and John have made up for all the time you lost when you were being slack-jawed, stuffed-up British idiots," he flinched slightly and she smoothed a thumb across his cheekbone, smiling, "you both come back to me, and I'll show you just how marvelous I am."

His eyes widened at that, but he smiled as she shoved him gently in the chest, spinning him so that he was once again facing John. With one last soft look down at her, he squared his shoulders and strode off to where John was waiting, looking for all the world like the happiest man in existence. 

Mary watched him reach out a hand, which Sherlock took as he reached John, entwining their fingers and pulling John close. He buried his face in John's hair, and John's hands gripped tightly at the back of Sherlock's ridiculous coat, determined, it seemed, to never let go again. 

She smiled as she turned away from them, strolling as briskly as her enormous belly would allow back towards Mycroft, who was now unabashedly gobsmacked, staring at her as though she had just sprouted antlers.

"Give me a lift back to mine, then, Myc?" 

She smirked as the hated nickname seemed to bring his brain back online. He shook his head once as if to clear it, then schooled his features back into the same placid deference that seemed to be his automatic response to everything.

"Of... of course, Mrs. Watson. Please. Allow me."

He opened the back door of the car for her and offered her his hand as she heaved her unweildly self into the car, snuggling down in the warmth and plush leather as he joined her and immediately began barking clipped, coded orders into his phone. 

Mary gazed out the window as the countryside gave way to noisy, crowded, beautiful London. Perhaps tonight she'd begin packing up the Christmas things. If things went the way she hoped, they'd need to be moved further than just the basement before too long. 

She powered down her phone for the night, knowing that the only two people who would need to contact her had been given strict orders not to do so for two days. She wouldn't disturb them. When they came home on Sunday, they'd have to sit down and hash it out-- but it could all wait until then. 

After all, she thought, smiling softly to herself, they had time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heading back to Baker Street with the slack-jawed, stuffed-up British idiots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hrm. I didn't think this was going to be more than a one-shot, but then I kind of just kept thinking about it... and here is the result. An observation before we start: the further we get away from the episodes and the more steam this fandom's formidable analytical skillz (yes, with a 'z') gain, the less shiny-happy Mary's intentions and actions look. 
> 
> Oh well. For this story, at least, I'm going to assume that she was only so duplicitous out of a desire for self-preservation, and now that Sherlock has neutralized the big threat to her safety in Magnussen, she can just be a huge badass who also happens to be in love with and loved by two other enormous badasses, and they can all be fluffy and badass together in perpetuity. 
> 
> Sherlock gets a little mushy in this chapter, but I think John caught him off-guard with that kiss, and his filters are a bit on the fritz. Plus, he gets to touch the man he's been pining over for years. So he's gonna take advantage of that, and he'll thank you to not question the veracity of his motives. Kthnxbai. :)
> 
> Thanks for all the lovely comments and kudos, btw. You're all very kind and encouraging, and made me want to continue to explore this little rabbit hole with your lovely sentiments. :)

Sherlock tasted like cigarettes and peppermint.

On any other day, in any other circumstance, John would have given his best friend hell for the smoking—mocked him mercilessly for the half-arsed attempt to mask the deed with breath mints—but at the moment, with his tongue otherwise occupied exploring the heretofore unmapped corners of Sherlock’s mouth, John just simply couldn’t be bothered. 

He tasted like peppermint and low-tars and a dark, rich something that was entirely his own. Unique, like the smell of the shirt collars John had buried his nose in during the weeks following Sherlock’s funeral, had stained with furtive tears and wrinkled with countless nights falling into fitful, tormented sleep with the fine fabrics twisted around his hands until the Sherlock smell had faded beneath the weight of his misery. The smell that was enveloping him now as he buried his face in his best friend’s neck, nosing aside the familiar blue scarf, desperate for skin. 

He felt Sherlock shiver against him as John’s lips found the hinge of his jaw, a shaky, jittery sigh escaping his swollen lips as he tilted his head to give him better access. 

And wasn’t that intoxicating? To have Sherlock Holmes so pliant and responsive in his arms? John couldn’t suppress a happy, disbelieving giggle as he peppered kisses up and along Sherlock’s jawline, bringing their mouths back together and fitting his wide grin around the contours of Sherlock’s astounding, slightly swollen lips. 

And then Sherlock pulled away slightly, and John just had time to catch the matching joyful smile on his face before he had buried his face in John’s hair and was just breathing, slowly, while his long fingers gripped the back of John’s jacket and attempted, although it was nigh impossible, to bring them closer together. 

John simply held onto him in return, breathing in that longed-for, familiar smell of tobacco and tea and chemicals and Sherlock, for long moments as the sun made its last descent and night slid silently over the airfield. 

“Should’ve done that before you got on the plane,” sighed John, gently pulling back from Sherlock so he could look into his familiar, beloved face, the blue lights of the runway cutting across his angular cheeks in knife slashes of shadow. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, John,” murmured Sherlock, on hand now playing with the hair at the nape of John’s neck, sending pleasant tingles down his spine. “If you’d tried that before, no doubt Mycroft would’ve had his minions rugby tackle you and bodily force you into a car, followed by an extended sojourn in an undisclosed location.”

“Which would have been a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?” John raised a bemused eyebrow at Sherlock. Mycroft could be a bit of a dick sometimes, but John was of the opinion that his actions had always been in the service of Sherlock’s happiness. 

“Mycroft is an imbecile when it comes to emotions,” said Sherlock, wrinkling his nose slightly at the distasteful word in a way that had John aching to kiss the creases in between his eyes. “But he knows enough of me to know that, if I had even the slightest indication that I could… that you might…”

“Love you with all my battered soul?” John suggested casually, entwining his fingers with Sherlock’s as he tugged him toward the still-idling car.

Sherlock’s gasp made John turn, but before he’d gotten all the way round, he found himself pressed gently but insistently into the side of the sedan, being kissed as though the world was ending and he was Sherlock’s only chance at salvation. He felt his knees weaken, and Sherlock’s arms were around him, and breathing seemed unbearably dull as he gasped when Sherlock pulled away to press his forehead to John’s. 

“He knew I’d never leave you again,” whispered Sherlock, his eyes pressed tightly closed as if in pain. 

“He knew I’d never let you,” whispered John, running one hand down the rough weave of Sherlock’s coat and gazing at their fingers as he entwined them once more. “Never, as long as we’re both alive, Sherlock Holmes. You are never to make me live without you, ever again.”

And when his eyes met Sherlock’s, so close and silver and dark in that moment, he found them searching and serious. Sherlock lifted their joined hands to his heart, pressing John’s fingers into the fabric of his coat, his look so intense that it nearly stole John’s hard-won breath. 

“I will do everything I know how to, John Watson, to honor that vow to you.”

The kiss that followed was serious and deep, but lasted only a few moments, interrupted by a discreet cough from the front seat of the car against which they were leaning. John felt his face flush at the mundane reminder that other people inhabited the earth, and Sherlock rolled his eyes before opening the back door of the sedan and attempting (although his lanky frame made it tricky) to throw himself melodramatically into the back seat. John smiled indulgently as he made his more sedate entrance and slammed the door behind him. 

“Baker Street,” Sherlock commanded, and the car began to move gracefully toward the airfield’s exit. 

“Thought you’d have some top secret government superspy stuff to tend to,” observed John, sliding close to Sherlock and insinuating himself beneath one lanky arm. He thrilled at how natural it seemed, when Sherlock laid the arm across his shoulders and began playing idly with the short hair behind his ear. Like they’d been doing this for years.

“Mycroft’ll have the whole secret service working on cracking the encryption they used to hack into the networks,” said Sherlock, gazing out the window as his fingers continued to card through John’s hair. “The lot of them together will be just as fast as I would be, so I’m not really needed until there’s more to go on. Besides,” he allowed a genuine, happy smile to spread over his face as he turned to look again at John, “I’ve got it on strict orders from your wife that you and I are to spend the entire weekend making up for lost time.”

John laughed, the joy bubbling up in his chest until he couldn’t hold it in any longer. “She said that, did she? Knowing Mary, she didn’t use such polite terminology, and you’re just being a posh twat about it.”

“She may have called us ‘slack-jawed, stuffed-up British idiots,’” admitted Sherlock, trying and failing to hide the affection in his voice. “And implied that if we don’t look ‘blissfully shagged out’ when next she sees us, she will exact vengeance upon us in some as yet unnamed manner.”

“Well, she does know multiple ways to murder us with a tea cup. We wouldn’t want to disappoint her,” murmured John darkly, his hand sliding up the tailored leg of Sherlock’s trousers to disappear beneath his coat. Sherlock drew in a shuddering breath, the hand that had been running through John’s hair suddenly clenched tightly, making John give an appreciative little moan to accompany Sherlock’s breathy sigh. 

“Not yet, John. Please,” and Sherlock’s voice sounded so serious, so curiously sad, that John immediately withdrew his hand and used it to turn Sherlock’s face back to his from where he sought to hide by looking out the window. 

“Hey,” murmured John, leaning in to kiss Sherlock’s lowered eyelids. “What’s the matter, love? Where did you go?”

Sherlock didn’t answer right away, but rather leaned close and tucked his curly head beneath John’s chin, folding his long frame up and tucking his legs beneath him on the fine leather upholstery. 

“It’s too much,” Sherlock muttered into John’s neck, as though embarrassed.

“Hmm?” 

“I never thought I would get an opportunity to do this with you,” Sherlock breathed into his neck, his nose finding the space behind John’s ear and breathing deeply. “There’s so much… I never… I hadn’t allowed for this eventuality. And I need to concentrate on… on what I should say, so… the car and the lights and London… it’s too much.”

John’s heart was suddenly unbelievably warm. He’d noticed, since Sherlock had returned to him, that the man was more demonstrative in his feelings. Well, thought John, that hadn’t been hard to accomplish. The Sherlock of two years before had barely seemed to have feelings besides disdain and boredom and the occasional, raucous glee. Of course he’d be disoriented by the paradigm shift that John had caused when he’d kissed Sherlock—was it really only an hour before? 

Hell. No wonder it felt overwhelming.

John didn’t answer Sherlock, and instead tucked his head back into the crook of his shoulder, sheltering his friend from the bright, over-stimulating reality of London. He pressed a soft kiss into the dark curls and simply listened to Sherlock breathing, absently drawing spirals into the fabric of his coat. 

When the car pulled up to the kerb outside 221 Baker Street, it did so just as countless cars before it had done-- quietly, with little fanfare to suggest that this time was any different than the hundreds of others that had preceded it. And yet, thought John, the world was irrevocably different now than it had been this morning.

It was funny, his brain whispered idly as he took in the beloved sight of that dark lacquered door, how the change of everything could feel so welcome, so needed and right. John Watson's world had changed so many times before-- a searing, poisonous pain in his shoulder, a coffee on a park bench with an old mate from uni. A fall. A drawn-on moustache and a blinding fury. A hole shot neatly through the middle of a coin. And all those times before, the world had howled at him with treacherous unfamiliarity, snarling and sniggering at the cold clutch of fear and regret that was the only reminder of what had gone before.

And yet now, the change felt like slipping slowly into warm water. He allowed his mind to curl lovingly over the memory of Mary's sweet, understanding smile, the feel of her breath against his cheek as she whispered that he could have the world. Sherlock's longed-for lips pressing insistently against his, his disbelieving smile and the soft kiss that John had watched pass between the two people he loved more than life itself. The feeling that this was how his life was always supposed to be.

Sherlock flung open the door of the sedan, breaking John from his reverie, and rocketed out of the car and through the door to the flat, leaving John to thank their driver and follow at a more leisurely pace.

Well, he thought, smiling to himself as he mounted the seventeen steps to 221B. Some things never change.

When he shouldered his way through the half-open door to the flat, his eyes were drawn immediately to the sight of Sherlock, standing with his back to John, his gaze seemingly fixed on the worn red armchair.

"Sherlock?" ventured John tentatively, closing the distance between them and placing one hand on his shoulder. "Everything alright?"

"You were sitting there when I first realized I loved you," he murmured, not taking his eyes from the faded crimson cushions. "Scared the hell out of me. I didn't know what to do with the information. I just... sat and was terrified for hours."

"I am quite terrifying," allowed John, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's chest and pressing a kiss into the back of his neck.

"You were just sitting there. Not doing anything special. Reading. Not really paying attention to anything much..." Sherlock continued as though John hadn't spoken, lost in his recollections. "And I looked up at you and realized I'd kill anyone who thought to harm you. That I'd die before I'd let you be in pain.

"It was entirely irrational," he whispered, shaking his head as though dislodging an annoying insect. "Self-preservation is the engine of evolution. Every creature's first instinct should be to protect itself, to endure, and yet I found that I would sooner cease to be, myself, before living in a world where you did not exist."

John felt a lump rising in his throat, but swallowed manfully around it as he leaned his forehead down against Sherlock's spine, resting there as he thought of what to say to such a pronouncement. 

“The feeling is mutual,” he finally whispered, speaking to the inside of his eyelids where they were clamped down tightly. “I happen to know from experience that the world without you in it is almost entirely miserable. Even when I found Mary—or she found me, it doesn’t matter—and she made the living bearable again… she’s only half of my heart, Sherlock. You took the other half with you when you jumped.”

Sherlock turned in John’s embrace, looking down at him with eyes that were serious and sad. “You know I wouldn’t have left without you, had it been a choice I could have made.”

“I know,” sighed John, looking down at his shoes. “But it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve wasted all this time. All this time we could’ve been happy.”

“Nothing about it has been simple, John.”

“It could have been, though!” And John let go of Sherlock, running fingers through his hair in frustration. “Mary said something just now. About how we’ve never played by the rules, and I was trying to fit us all inside them. I just never thought…”

“Your wife is a most extraordinary woman,” smiled Sherlock. The softness in his eyes and voice caught John off-guard. Sherlock never sounded like that—almost… smitten. 

And it hit John like a punch in the stomach. The little observations that he’d failed to follow to their logical conclusion. Sherlock’s hand in Mary’s as the two of them sat vigil beside John, lungs burning from bonfire smoke. The kiss he’d lain on her forehead before saving a man’s life through a hotel room door. The desperate gunshot that erased her secrets, the plea for John to give her his love. 

It wasn’t only John Watson for whom Sherlock Holmes was prepared to sacrifice everything. 

“When did you realize you loved her, too?”

Sherlock raised an amused eyebrow as he allowed a small, shy smile to color his eyes. “She kept you alive when I could not. She ensured that there was something of you left for me to return to. She loves you, perhaps, very nearly as much as I do, and she is very decidedly not dull.”

“Aside from the shooting-you thing, yeah?” John’s smile was slightly forced. He ran his fingers down Sherlock’s chest, fingers lingering over the place where he knew a still-tender new scar had formed.

“The shooting was also not dull,” responded Sherlock breathlessly, a little shiver running through him at John’s touch. “And really, John. A bullet wound is as nothing compared to the pain I put you through. I know that. Perhaps it was part of my penance for hurting you so grievously.”

“Don’t be a martyr, Sherlock. It doesn’t suit you,” John whispered, running his hand once again over the silk-covered bullet wound. “I won’t try to understand how the pair of you operate; two mad people are really more than I care to parse,” and he grinned up at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes.

“We may both be mad, but you, my dear Watson, are the one who makes a habit of falling in love with mad people.”

“Yeah,” John murmured softly, unable to stop himself from indulging yet again in the novelty of running fingers over Sherlock’s angular face. “I do seem to have a type, don’t I?”

His fingers found the seam of Sherlock’s lips, and he couldn’t contain the groan that escaped him as Sherlock, eyes still locked on John’s as though he were some fascinating mystery to be solved, opened his mouth and enveloped John’s fingertips in slick, soft warmth. 

“The madwoman gave you a directive, if memory serves.” John’s voice was rough with wanting, his breath coming short as Sherlock released his fingers, only to kiss each one reverently, as though performing an essential experiment, or a sacrament. 

“Hm,” Sherlock confirmed, entwining his long fingers with John’s and pulling him close, pressing their bodies together from knee to chest. John groaned again at the confirmation that Sherlock wanted him as much as he wanted Sherlock. “I’d like to avoid any consequences she might devise if we don’t acquiesce to her wishes.”

“Yeah,” John whispered breathlessly, suppressing a whimper as Sherlock’s mouth unerringly found that spot just below his ear that caused him to buck forward, seeking friction. “We wouldn’t want to get you shot again.”

“Indeed not,” Sherlock breathed into his neck, tongue flicking out intermittently to taste John’s skin. “And so there’s only one logical course of action for use to take.”

“Which would—Jesus Christ, Sherlock—be what, exactly?”

Sherlock drew back slightly, his smile so quietly joyful that the entire room seemed to glow with it. He tugged gently on their still-entwined fingers, and John followed him, as he would follow Sherlock anywhere for as long as he was breathing. 

“Let’s make up for lost time.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pillow talk, idiot-style.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bug bit me again, and I just started writing. I've gotten questions about how long this is going to be, how often I will update, etc... I can tell you nothing definitively, which is super annoying. Sorry.
> 
> I really like this story, and I enjoy writing it when the mood strikes. But life gets in the way very often, and so it's not at the top of my list of priorities. I don't really know how long it'll be yet, and I'll try and be more consistent about when I update... but I can't sign anything in blood, so put that knife away. :)
> 
> I hope you enjoy-- as always, comments are delightful. :)

Sherlock woke up to the light in his eyes at an angle that suggested mid-morning. Ten o’clock, possibly a little later, if the cloud cover had accumulated as he had predicted, given the meteorological conditions of the previous evening. He blinked lazily, squinting against the flat, bright morning of London in late winter, and stretched luxuriously, feeling muscles pulling against tendons and ligaments in a way they hadn’t in nigh on a decade. 

He allowed himself a slightly blissed-out grin as the events that led to this pleasant soreness presented themselves for his inspection. 

They were almost overwhelming in their completeness—every taste and sight and sound and sensation all rolling back over him like gentle, warm waves. John’s callused hands sliding over the skin of his shoulders, the soft whump of his shirt as it fell to the floor of his bedroom, the smell of John at the junction of his neck and shoulder. The ragged breathing and needy little whimpers he’d wrung from John as he came.

The fingers tracing feather-light across his shoulder blades brought him back quickly to the present. He could feel the warmth of John radiating at his side, his bare skin so close to Sherlock’s own that he registered the shift in humidity level from where his legs rested beneath the duvet to where his torso and chest were left open to the air. Sherlock shifted minutely closer on his stomach and gave a happy sigh as John’s lips brushed softly against the back of his neck. 

“I wish you would have told me,” murmured John, his voice belying a tension at odds with Sherlock’s oxytocin-induced contentment. 

And it took Sherlock a ridiculously long time to make the accurate deduction about what the hell John means. Sex, it seems, and perhaps especially the epic amounts of it he’s just indulged in after a nine-year abstention, made him profoundly stupid. Now that he was paying attention properly, he realized that the gentle fingers tracing patterns on his back were following the lines of the ragged, ugly scars—his most obvious and distasteful souvenir from his two years away. 

“It was well in the past by the time I saw you again,” whispered Sherlock, his voice gravelly and rough with sleep and lack of use. “What good would it have done for you to know? I’d been gone—I was back. What with Mary and the rest of it, it felt… superfluous. For you to know all the gory details.”

John gripped his shoulder and pulled until Sherlock relented, rolling over onto his back and reluctantly meeting John’s eyes. They were that deep, serious blue that Sherlock had seen too often since he returned—the shade that means John was hurting and unable to understand precisely why. 

“You’re my best friend, Sherlock,” he murmured, his eyes piercing straight into Sherlock’s. “I know how you take your tea and the number for your favorite take-away and the exact temperature it’ll be when you insist we turn the heating on every fall.” 

The hand that wasn’t resting on Sherlock’s chest, just over his heart, came up to tangle in his alarmingly mussed curls, John’s thumb stroking gently back and forth across his temple. “I know how fast you can scale a fire-escape when you’re chasing a suspect. I know the expression you get on your face when you’ve solved some impossible puzzle. I know that your magnifier was a gift from your dad and I know the exact pitch of your voice when you’re scared for my life.” 

His eyes got darker, the pupils wider, as he bent low to brush his lips softly over each of Sherlock’s eyelids. “It’s only been one night, granted, but I know that you try to hold your breath at first when I put my mouth around your cock. I know that you have a mole behind your left knee and that when I kiss you there it makes you moan. I know what your face looks like when you come with your cock in my hand.” 

Sherlock could hear his own breathing go ragged as John tenderly kissed his way from the corner of Sherlock’s eye to the corner of his mouth, where he proceeded to lay quick, licking kisses until Sherlock whined and turned his head to capture John’s lips properly. Their mouths fit together with the ease of recent practice, and Sherlock allowed himself to sink into the heady pleasure of having John Watson here, naked and in his bed and hovering over him protectively, whispering his name like a prayer. 

John was the one to finally break the kiss, ignoring Sherlock’s whimper of protest but nevertheless pressing their foreheads together, both of them breathing hard. 

“Now, Mr. Suffer-In-Silence… tell me right now that I don’t want to know every single, solitary detail of your entire existence, from now until we are old and grey.” 

Sherlock’s brain went offline again. It was only a blip, but it was long enough for him to notice. He was going to have to conduct a study on how sexual activity inhibits mental acuity, as this enticing, enveloping awareness of John could become very distracting—possibly dangerous— if he couldn’t control it. 

“You’re going to hate what I have to tell you,” he whispered, closing his eyes to block out the sight of John, still so near and beloved in the rumpled perfection of the bed. “I’ll never be the same man for you, ever again.”

This got a rueful chuckle from John that surprised Sherlock enough to make him open his eyes. “Well, we might as well get the whole metamorphosis well and properly sorted while we’re still naked in bed together for the first time, wouldn’t you agree?” He sucked a kiss into a spot right beneath Sherlock’s jaw that they had discovered early in last night’s activities, and which made Sherlock’s breath go so shaky that he could not answer John for a moment. 

When he regained his equilibrium enough to push John away and meet his eyes, he found them intent and patient and so full of affection that it made bravery flare low in Sherlock’s chest. 

“Right before I came home, I was captured by network operatives in Serbia. Men who had been on Moriarty’s payroll. Or. Well. Close enough. They got a piece of any action he had going in eastern Europe, anyway. And that was a pretty substantial base of operations.” 

He let out a shaky sigh as John settled down beside him, bringing his head to rest on Sherlock’s chest with his hand stroking nonsense patterns into the skin of his chest. Sherlock brought his arm around John’s shoulders to pull him closer. “They were… not pleased with my intrusion into their affairs. They’d managed to keep their operation together, even after Jim went off the grid. Drugs and arms smuggling, human trafficking. Nasty business, until I made it stop.”

These memories were disconcertingly complete, too. Stinging whips and death-sharp knives and hours upon hours of shouted Serbian threats. He’d spent three days strung up like a crucifix before Mycroft extracted him—breaths getting harder, dehydration making his head swim. After Mycroft had got him out, he’d spent three weeks in a safe house in Germany. The MI6 medical staff had been good, but they hadn’t been able to repair the cosmetic damage done by the very able heavies who’d been his most common company while in captivity. 

“The torture was… unpleasant. Until Mycroft got me out,” Sherlock’s voice was low. Irrationally, he felt as though speaking of that time out loud might make it come howling back into reality. “They’re only scars, I suppose. But I didn’t like to tell you. You’d find some way to make it your fault.”

John’s breath was shaky on the inhalation as he twisted himself to look into Sherlock’s face. His eyes are serious and sad, and Sherlock was so sick to death of seeing John like this and knowing that it was his fault he was in pain. 

“You should have taken me with you,” whispered John, his voice rough and choked with forced-back tears. “I would have killed them all before they had a chance to touch you. I would kill anyone who tried to take you away from me.” He closed his eyes, like he was forcing himself into some semblance of equilibrium, but it didn’t seem to be working. He lowered his forehead to Sherlock’s collarbone, whispering brokenly into the skin. 

“You should have taken me, too.”

“John.” 

And Sherlock’s voice was rough with tears, now, too. Blast this man… now that he knew the taste of John Watson, the smell and feel and sight of him so intimately, would he never be able to function without so much… emotion? Ever again? 

“John, it would have defeated the whole purpose. The entire premise of the damned plan was to make you safe. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, too, but you above all. I told you I’d realized I wouldn’t live in a world without you. That’s. That’s what Jim meant when he said he’d burn my heart out. That he’d deprive the world of you and. And leave me here to live in it. I couldn’t. I wasn’t going to take the risk. The things I did while I was away… I wouldn’t wish those memories on my worst enemy, let alone you.” 

His hand gripped gently at the back of John’s sleep-rumpled hair and tugged until he was once again looking at Sherlock. 

“Never you, John.”

The look on John’s face as he searched Sherlock’s expression was caught somewhere between the one he got when he was about to deck him and that newly-discovered I-will-tear-you-apart-until-you-forget-your-own-name look that Sherlock was discovering he quite wanted to see more of. Sherlock held his gaze for as long as he could, but had to look away from the rage and grief and love that were playing across John’s beloved, careworn features. 

“From now on, you make me a promise.”

John’s voice was low and serious and brooked absolutely no argument. It was Captain Watson and threatened animal and John-saying-he-loved-him all blended together, and the tone made Sherlock’s eyes snap up to lock on John’s above him, ready to promise him anything if it only meant he could keep John with him for a while longer. 

“From now until we die—and I expect us to both be old and bald and senile before that happens—“

Sherlock snorted. “I shan’t go bald, John. Male pattern baldness is carried on through matrilineal genetics, and my maternal grandfather died at 90 with all his hair still atop his head. You, however, will be bald by 60.”

“Shut up, you unimaginable wanker. Alright. But neither of us is dying again until we are very, very old. And until that happens, you will never make a decision like that without me, again. If there’s ever again a choice between you leaving me and going to do stupid, dangerous, heroic things while I sit home and knit, and you trying to save my life by leaving me out of it—you let me decide for myself where I belong. Because it will always, always be with you. Understood?”

A cold sort of dread twinged at the bottom of Sherlock’s stomach. Whoever was behind the supposed reemergence of James Moriarty would likely share his beliefs about the location of Sherlock’s heart. Thoughts of Bogota and Leavenworth and Nairobi and Phnom Penh raced through his mind, made all the more terrifying because John stood beside him in all of them. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the thought of John, safe and secure and (he’d thought at the time) living a full life in London, had been what had kept him going during the worst of those times. If he had not known John was safe…

And yet. All the times he’d imagined John beside him, in those moments of greatest weakness when his will had nearly been overcome. The wishful thinking curled up in rain gutters or in dank drug dens, summoning the weight of John’s arms to huddle into in the dark, though they had been nothing like experiencing the real thing. If there was ever a time when he had to live like that again… no. He wouldn’t be able to survive it without John, knowing what he knew now. 

“Understood.”

John’s eyes warmed with affection. “Good. You’re a prick for failing to ask me the first time, but hearing you explain the reasons has the disconcerting effect of making me want to shag you until you forget what decade we live in or what species you are. But, if it ever comes down to it again, we’re together. Right? That’s my choice, Sherlock. I need it to be yours, too.”

He was fairly certain John was some sort of intellectual succubus, because his brain seemed to have gone on permanent standby, and all Sherlock could do was nod dumbly, before pulling John to him and sealing their mouths together with a fervor that made John gasp and pull himself fully on top of Sherlock, both of them desperate for more contact. His fingers wound themselves through John’s, knowing somewhere deep in his chest that nothing—no Moriarty or snipers or blackmail or rooftop—would even induce him to let go again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking the good news to the Captain of the John-and-Sherlock 'ship doesn't go precisely as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three-day weekends are apparently very good for writing. Snowy, windy, awful weather in April doesn't hurt, either. Got to keep occupied when you're stuck inside all day, right? 
> 
> Enjoy! Comments are always appreciated. :)

John Watson was still having a hard time believing this was his life. As he lay beside the sleeping form of Sherlock Holmes, lean and pale and so very real beside him, he couldn’t help but dig a thumbnail painfully into the webbing of his opposite hand. It hurt. A lot. John couldn’t suppress a grateful smile as Sherlock gave a muted snuffle and burrowed further into the rumpled blankets. 

He might not have been so suspicious had not this very scenario played out in his daydreams for longer than he cared to think about. Lazy days spent in bed with his mad flat mate—giggling, teasing shags and brutal fucking and passionate, sincere love-making… he’d wanted it all, for so much longer than he dared admit. Even after he’d found Mary and she’d seemed to wake him from a constant nightmare, he couldn’t stop himself from imagining the taste of Sherlock’s skin, the feel of his dark curls twisting through John’s fingers. 

He found his hand suddenly tangled in those very curls, desperate to memorize the sensation, now that he was reasonably sure that this was really happening, this time. Sherlock didn’t even stir at the intrusion—just gave a tiny sigh before his breaths went slow and even again. 

John thought that Sherlock must not have slept much when he was in the custody of MI6—that he was making up for lost hours now. God knew he himself hadn’t—he’d spent hours on the phone with Mycroft after Appledore—had actually been physically thrown from the polished oak stillness of the Diogenes on two occasions after marching into the middle of the library and shouting at the top of his lungs for the bastard. When the black sedan had finally rolled up beside him as he was walking home from the surgery one afternoon, he’d thrown himself in with such violence that he’d very nearly impaled Mycroft with his own umbrella. 

When he’d been informed of Sherlock’s new “mission,” it hadn’t made sleeping any easier. Mary was used to him waking her with shouts and thrashing—she’d simply rubbed his back and murmured comforting platitudes as he sobbed into his pillow, gasping Sherlock’s name. 

Really, when he thought back to it, he’d not been exactly subtle about the depth of his feeling for Sherlock. Mary, even before he had known about her dark past and frightening skill sets, had never struck John as either ordinary or oblivious. Of course she’d known he was in love with Sherlock. Bit obvious, really. And so on those dark nights between Christmas and the night before Sherlock’s birthday when Mycroft had spoken of the Balkans without meeting John’s eyes, Mary had comforted the man she loved while he mourned—yet again—for the man he loved. 

John, his fingers still tangled in a sleeping Sherlock’s hair, couldn’t suppress the little chuckle of disbelief that escaped him. It wasn’t every woman who would even tolerate his friendship with Sherlock, let alone the deep and abiding love he’d worked so ineffectually to hide. Hell, he’d been on enough resentful third dates while he’d been living at Baker Street to know that Mary’s initial reaction to having Sherlock thrust unexpectedly into her life was singular, even before the unbelievable conversation that had landed him in this sex-mussed bed with the man. 

He and Sherlock had shed their clothes almost as soon as they’d crossed the threshold to Sherlock’s bedroom on Friday evening, and had not felt the need to put them back on since. They’d fairly wrecked the bed, snuggled on the couch eating Chinese (John had deigned food necessary, and so had briefly broken the no-clothes rule by slipping in to one of Sherlock’s dressing gowns to pay the delivery guy), and made a pretty good start on their seemingly shared-but-unspoken desire to have sex on every horizontal surface in the flat. And some vertical ones, too. It should have tweaked John’s heteronormative socialization to have been scooped off his feet by Sherlock the night before and slammed roughly against the wall of the sitting room, his legs wrapped around Sherlock’s back. And yet, thought John with a happy little shiver at the memory, it most decidedly did not. 

He was brought out of his reverie by a sleepy, luxuriant moan from the awakening Sherlock, who twisted closer to his side before opening his eyes and blinking up at John, who smiled at him fondly. 

“Never known you to sleep this much,” he observed, carding his fingers through Sherlock’s alarming bed-head. 

“Hm. New variable, John. Bound to change certain patterns when such levels of specialized physical activity are abruptly introduced into even so unorthodox a routine as mine.” Sherlock yawned, kissing the crest of John’s hip as he stretched. 

“Not to mention the whole ‘I’ve-been-granted-a-reprieve-from-a-very-painful-and-protracted-death’ thing,” John quipped, although he tugged Sherlock’s torso to rest more fully against his chest, hugging him tightly as he did so.

“I think the angst of that was largely yours to bear,” murmured Sherlock. 

“Yeah, right,” scoffed John, rolling his eyes. “You go ahead and keep telling yourself you weren’t just as frightened as I was when you got on that plane. You’re some great shakes at maintaining fake equilibrium, Sherlock, but I know you better than that.”

“Well,” he sighed, tracing an absent finger along John’s thigh, “we most likely won’t have a chance to test your theory again for quite some time. I doubt Mycroft would allow me to skip town now, even if I suddenly expressed a desire to give up crime-solving and become a prima ballerina.”

“Is that likely?” asked John. “Not that I’d be complaining, mind you. You in tights… I could see my way into being on board with that. But the thing is, I quite like the crime solving, so if you’re planning on giving it up…”  
“You’ll have to go find yourself another genius high-functioning sociopath to follow around?”

“I think we’ve conclusively disproved the sociopath bit, don’t you?” murmured John, pressing a lingering kiss into Sherlock’s mouth and smirking when he moaned quietly. “Told you.”

“If you’re going to be all smug and ‘how the mighty have fallen’ about it, could you at least do it while also making tea?” grumbled Sherlock, trying and failing to roll away from John’s embrace and into a stroppy ball. 

“Your wish is my command, Sir Sociopath,” chuckled John, pulling Sherlock’s back tightly against his chest and kissing his neck before letting him go. 

“Piss off,” mumbled Sherlock, pulling the covers up over his head as John left the room, laughing. 

He sauntered into the kitchen, which was actually quite chilly in his current state of undress, and after the sweaty closeness of the bedroom. He put the kettle on and went to build up the fire again, which had effectively gone out since they’d lain before it for some hours on the dreary, foggy Saturday afternoon the day before. 

He was so engrossed in the task of getting the fire going without burning anything important that he didn’t hear the footsteps announcing Mrs. Hudson’s imminent arrival until it was too late. 

“Hoo-hoo!” she chirped, poking her head around the flat’s front door. “Sherlock, dear, I’ve just gotten back from my sister’s an—good god! John Watson, what on God’s green earth are you doing?”

There was really no good way to explain to his former landlady—whose good books he’d worked so hard to get back into over the last year—why he was starkers, with very obvious sex hair and a few purpling love bites, building a fire in the living room of a flat where he no longer lived. 

“Mrs. Hud—I… um… hi.”

“John, I think the milk’s gone off while I’ve been detained. You’ll have to go ask—oh! Mrs. Hudson. How convenient. Would you happen to have some milk? John’s making tea and he’s always so peevish when there’s no milk about.”

Sherlock was wrapped in the flat sheet from his bed, looking like a Roman senator leaning against the wall that divided the kitchen from the living room. He didn’t seem bothered at all that his landlady had just walked in on him, essentially in flagrante delicto with his married best friend. 

Mrs. Hudson, however, seemed to be very much bothered. She marched right over to John, who was still standing before the (now very much lit) fireplace, completely without clothes, and slapped him hard across the face. 

“How dare you do this to Mary, John! After everything you’ve put that poor girl through the last few months—and she’s having your child! I mean, I know that you were something of a cad in your younger days, but how could you do this to Mary—to Sherlock? You selfish, childish, thoughtless—“

“Mrs. Hudson, do calm yourself before you have a stroke,” cut in Sherlock, his voice harsher than it usually was when he addressed his landlady. “Though I recognize the clichéd nature of what I am about to say, I can assure you that this is not, in the strictest sense, what it looks like.”

“You and John haven’t just been sleeping together, then?” she sneered, casting a disgusted glance at a thoroughly speechless John once more before turning to glare at Sherlock. “I thought you’d be better than this, Sherlock. After all that lovely talk at their wedding about wanting to keep them safe for each other—“

“Mrs. Hudson, do shut up,” sighed Sherlock, rolling his eyes. “Yes, John and I have been sleeping together. Although there has been admittedly little sleeping involved. No, I have not decided to take up home-wrecking as a hobby, and yes, Mary knows about the whole thing. It was her idea, in fact, and since she’s the most dangerous of the three of us, John and I both thought it within our best interests to go along with it. Not that it was much hardship.” At this, he smiled over at John with a softness genuine enough to leave both he and Mrs. Hudson slightly gobsmacked. 

“We are due to see Mary in a few hours to discuss the logistics of this delightful new development, and I for one would very much like another go before we must be seen in public. But I want tea first, and John gets irritable when he has to drink it black, so for God’s sake, do you have any milk?”

Mrs. Hudson’s eyes could not have gotten any wider as she stared from Sherlock to John and back again. Evidently unable to think of anything to say, she simply shook her head and began striding briskly back toward the door. 

“I think I still have some from my trip to Tesco last Wednesday. Let me see. I’ll just leave it on the kitchen table, shall I?” She turned back to them, her cheeks slightly pink but her eyes sparkling wickedly. “I think I fancy a trip to the cinema this afternoon. Probably won’t be home until the evening, Sherlock dear. Just put the milk back in my fridge when you’ve finished, alright?” And she marched out of the flat without another backward glance. 

John could do nothing but stand there, unable to adequately process all the mortification that his mind reeled with. 

“It’s not as though she hasn’t been expecting it for years,” Sherlock observed, sauntering over to where John was still very naked before the fireplace. “She’s been keeping her fingers crossed since the second you moved in.”

“Of all the ways I could possibly have imagined telling her,” whispered John, his voice wooden with the shock of recent events, “this would never have occurred, even in my worst nightmares.”

“That’s because you lack imagination,” drawled Sherlock, wrapping John in his arms and the sheet and pressing their skin together. “I can think of at least twelve other scenarios which would have been infinitely more embarrassing. For at least three of them, you would have immediately demanded that we move into an igloo in the Yukon rather than see Mrs. Hudson ever again.”

“Well,” muttered John, tucking his head beneath Sherlock’s chin, “I think the embarrassment I’ll be dealing with for the next ten years will be quite enough to be getting on with, thanks.”

“I wasn’t joking about us needing to go see Mary, though,” said Sherlock, pressing his hips into John’s in an insistently suggestive way. “And I wasn’t joking about wanting another round before we do so.”

“Yeah,” breathed John, responding to Sherlock’s circling hips by bracketing them with his hands and pressing forward. “I suppose we’ve got a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

His stomach performed a pleasant sort of nervous swoop as he thought about it—sitting at a table with the two people he loved most in the world and discussing with them how he might be able to keep them both. 

“Yes. She intimated that she might have more in mind than just talking, when last I spoke to her,” murmured Sherlock, his breath growing ragged as he mouthed kisses along John’s hairline. 

John was bringing his mouth up to press beneath Sherlock’s jaw when the whistling of the kettle made him pause, and Sherlock groan. 

“Tea’s ready,” observed John, unnecessarily, unable to stop his hips as he thrust more roughly against Sherlock, who growled and pushed John unceremoniously down into his armchair by the merrily crackling fire. 

“I am no longer thirsty.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting all three of them in the same place might turn out to be a more difficult proposition than originally anticipated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again. 
> 
> So, in the downtime between eagerly anticipating 'Fargo' and figuring out how I'm going to get my butt to London to see Mr. Cumberbatch play Hamlet next year, I may have written some more. But I should warn you right now that those two projects will probably be taking the bulk of my concentration from here on in. ;-)
> 
> All joking aside, thanks again for the kudos and comments-- they are love, and you are all sweet and smart and insightful. I like you.

John was reasonably sure that it might be possible to die of too much sex.

He and Sherlock had fallen back into bed soon after their (for John, at least) rather traumatic encounter with Mrs. Hudson, and—but for one doomed attempt to commemorate this new chapter of their relationship with what turned out to be an only-theoretical dinner at Angelo’s—had stayed there, entranced by the still-novel concept of being able to touch each other, whenever and however they liked. 

John had been lying, blissed out and panting, with his feet up on Sherlock’s headboard, when he heard the telltale sound of Sherlock’s text alert from somewhere on the floor to his left. Sherlock grunted a protest, blowing out an indignant sigh onto the skin of John’s lower stomach, where his head rested, one of John’s hands still tangled in his hair. He disengaged himself with a moue of displeasure, and scrambled on his stomach (with less dignity than usual) to retrieve the mobile from his trousers pocket. 

“Damn,” he swore, his face illuminated in the evening darkness by the light from the phone screen.

“Mmm, what?” murmured John, still feeling little inclination to move from exactly where he was. 

“Mary,” said Sherlock, rolling the rest of his long body off of the bed and tumbling into a graceless heap on the floor. 

John couldn’t contain the giggle that escaped him at the sight of his long-limbed, usually-so-majestic friend attempting to put his naked arms and legs back into some semblance of order. 

“What’s she say, then?” he asked, finally finding the motivation to move, though he still felt no need to rush. Mary had given him this time with Sherlock, and though he grew more excited about seeing her again the more he thought about their imminent conversation, he didn’t think she’d begrudge him the sleepy, post-coital newness of this moment. 

“Asked if we’ll be in for dinner,” answered Sherlock, having finally gotten his body back into correct alignment and pulling on a pair of charcoal grey boxer briefs that had been flung unceremoniously across the room after their earlier, ill-fated attempt at getting dressed for the dinner that had never happened. “Told us to bring wine for us and ice cream for her.”

“Hey! Why is she the only one who gets ice cream?” 

Sherlock looked back over his shoulder at John as he pulled up a freshly pressed pair of black trousers, his expression almost disdainful enough to distract John from the astoundingly seductive picture he made. 

“I’m sure Mary wouldn’t begrudge you some of her Cherry Garcia, John, but I think you and I both know that none of us is particularly well-equipped to deal with what is sure to be, at times, an excruciatingly uncomfortable discussion. Since Mary cannot, in her current state, imbibe sufficient quantities of alcohol to, as you might say, “take the edge off”, I think it is advisable that we allow her to consume as many dopamine-inducing carbohydrates and sugars as possible, don’t you?” 

John chuckled, feeling brave enough to stick his head beneath Sherlock’s bed in search of his jumper. “Fair point, that. Wine it is, then. This poncy French waiter from a restaurant I was at a while back recommended one… never did get a chance to try it.”

Sherlock threw him another withering look, though his mouth twitched a bit. “That was champagne, you philistine. And neither of us is flush enough at the moment to afford the particular vintage to which you are referring. You’re lucky it was me that night—if it’d been a serious order, you’d have been eating pot noodles afterwards until you died of a sodium overdose.”

“Well, excusez-moi,” smirked John, pulling on his jumper and giving his socks up as a bad job. He padded over, barefoot, to where Sherlock was pulling on his suit jacket and straightening the already impeccable lines of his clothing. He wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s waist from behind and pressed a kiss into the nape of his neck, leaning his head over Sherlock’s shoulder to gaze with him onto the early London evening. 

“You know that I love you, even without the wine, right? I’m just such shit at saying it… but you should never doubt that it’s true. Loved you for ages—not planning on stopping any time soon.”

Sherlock didn’t say anything, but his shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly under John’s chin. One long-fingered hand stroked at John’s wrist before Sherlock latched onto his sleeve, spinning around and dragging John with him from the room. 

“I told Mary to order Indian from the place near your flat,” Sherlock said, briskly striding into the sitting room and swinging on his greatcoat. “Naan isn’t as good as the one right on Marlyebone, but needs must, I suppose. We’ll stop at Angelo’s and make him give us a bottle of that Cabernet you like.”

Sherlock bounded down the stairs to the front door of 221, turning back to grin at John from where he stood watching affectionately at the top of the stairs. 

“Are you planning on contacting Mary telepathically, or should we get a cab sometime in the next week or so?”

“I’m coming, you bastard. Just… hold on a moment, right? I’ll meet you outside.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him, but ultimately did as John asked. When he had swept from the house and shut the door behind him, John leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs and pressed a hand to his face, pressing with pleasant pressure into his own skin, and felt his face break into an almost painfully wide smile. He could feel little tears pricking at his eyes, making his nose itch, but didn’t mind. He just slumped against the wall and let himself be incandescent in his own happiness. 

He’d not had a proper moment away from Sherlock since he’d brought their mouths together at the airfield two nights before, and while the closeness had been amazing, he’d not had a chance to really properly process the change on his own. As always, Sherlock had led and John had followed, finding himself gloriously wrapped in his best friend for an entire weekend, without pause. 

Which was amazing. And new. And strange. And more than a little bit frightening, if he was honest with himself. He’d just needed a moment to be well and truly alone with the feelings, to identify them definitively for himself before trying to explain them to Sherlock and Mary. 

Mary. 

His ridiculous, marvelous, dangerous, beautiful wife. Who’d essentially told him to be happy, whatever it took, no matter how far away it was from the normal life that both he and she had desperately craved for so long. 

They’d tried to be normal, each of them separately, and had maybe both been thinking the same thing when they’d found each other: here’s a person with whom I can make a new start—bury the old me and just be quiet and sane and ordinary…

That had backfired fairly catastrophically. 

And now he was going to get in a cab with the beautiful madman he’d just spent the last two days shagging cross-eyed, to eat Indian food and ice cream with he and the luminous madwoman who’d made him realize—finally—that aspiring to normal was a colossal waste of time. And they’d both given him permission, it seemed, to be a little bit mad, too. 

He finally straightened up from against the wall, shrugging his coat on against the winter night outside, and walked down and out the door onto Baker Street—

where Sherlock was nowhere to be found. 

Looking about him and seeing no sign of the curls and coat that were the focal point of any scene they appeared in, John felt panic like hot lead sinking inside of him, threatening to burn a hole through the lining of his stomach. 

He had his phone out and was frantically fumbling for Sherlock’s number when a gleaming black car rolled up to the kerb. 

The window rolled down halfway, and John felt his eyes rolling, involuntarily, as Mycroft’s smooth, implacable voice came floating out of the dimness of the back seat. 

“Ah, Doctor Watson. Please don’t be alarmed; Sherlock is safe and sound and on his way to your wife’s flat.” At the way that Mycroft said the word ‘wife’, John felt his hackles rise defensively. “And I thought that, so long as the both of them are temporarily absent, you and I could have a little… chat.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary and Sherlock have a bit of time to chat while John is off being disapproved-at by Mycroft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Mary and Sherlock needed a chance to talk. They've got some... issues that need addressing. 
> 
> Mary says some stuff about monogamy in this chapter, and why she doesn't think it works. Now, I'd just like to preface this by saying that I have enormous respect for people who commit themselves to long-term, monogamous relationships, because it's a hell of a lot of work, and I think that if you find the right person, can be enormously rewarding and (to use Sherlock's word) affirming. 
> 
> BUT I have this whole huge problem with heterosexual monogamy as it has been institutionalized as the human 'norm', because I think that's baloney. We've all been socialized to expect monogamy, and I think that makes it unnecessarily angst-enducing for people who just don't swing that way. 
> 
> Clearly, if you're still reading this story, polyamory doesn't bug you too much. But I thought I'd point out that her viewpoint is not at all meant to cast aspersions on your lifestyle choices if you legitimately just are a one-person person. /rant :-)

Mary was laying the dining table with three settings when she heard the front door of the flat close with a little more aggression than was strictly necessary. If it hadn’t been accompanied by the melodramatic growling yell that Sherlock sometimes sounded when especially frustrated, she might have had the carving knife to his throat as he came tromping in through the sitting room. 

“Hmm. That wasn’t the sound I was hoping for,” she observed mildly, trying to keep her voice neutral, though her heart tightened at the sight of Sherlock, agitated and scowling and entirely sans John. 

“Mycroft,” he spit, leaning rigidly against the doorframe that led from the sitting room to the dining room. “Rolled up outside Baker Street while I was waiting for John outside. Did his usual Mycroft thing and sent me off in a cab while he waited to ambush John.”

“Oh, cripes,” she sighed, feeling irritation prick at the back of her mind. This was supposed to have been an important, special evening for them—for all three of them—and now there was an excellent chance that John would have some sort of crisis of conscience as a result of his wholly unwanted, uncalled-for talking-to from Mycroft bloody Holmes. Delightful. 

“Everything was going so well, and he has to go sticking his big nose in where it’s not wanted, and everything’ll be ruined,” seethed Sherlock, pacing back and forth across the floor and working himself up into a fury the likes of which she’d only heard about. “And John’ll come back all noble and self-denying and I can’t sham friendship again, Mary—“ his voice broke on the syllables of her name. “I can’t.”

He slumped down into one of the chairs, staring sightlessly at the flickering candles that were reflecting in the still-empty wine glasses. Mary’s newly acknowledged love for Sherlock bit painfully in her chest. She had never seen him look so utterly alone, and her heart was through with breaking for this man—she’d been responsible for so much of his pain… she’d not allow him to hurt anymore, not while she was breathing. 

Sidling around the table (which took up more space in the little room than her belly could comfortably spare), she awkwardly knelt before him and took his hands in hers. 

“Listen to me, you ridiculous, amazing, beautiful man,” she began, stroking her thumbs across his knuckles as she searched his defeated face. “I love John Watson more than I thought I could love anything. I was relatively certain there would be no one for me in this life—what I was—what I am—I didn’t think there could be a person on this planet who wouldn’t be disgusted. Terrified of me. If they knew the truth.”

Sherlock snorted. “What you are is brilliant and brave and tough and a crack shot.” His storm eyes flickered up to meet hers for a fraction of a second. “And, alright. Mad and fairly terrifying, for all of that. But still.”

“Well, thank you for that; you really are ridiculously sweet sometimes. But the point is that, even with everything that I am—and a lot of it is not very nice, Sherlock, as I think you might have deduced by now—” he didn’t deny it—just continued looking down at her hands where they still held his. “John still found it in him to love me. And he does. Love me, I mean. I don’t have any doubt about that—“

“And neither do I, Mary,” sighed Sherlock, his voice at once so affectionate and so defeated that her heart dropped further into her stomach. “He loves you. He married you. He’s yours, and you are his, and I love you both enough to not want to get in the way of that. God. Sentiment—“ and he broke off with a disgusted noise that sounded to Mary like nothing so much as the mask for an involuntary dry sob that she decided not to acknowledge, yet. 

“Don’t be stupid, Sherlock. That’s not my point, and you know it,” she admonished, bringing his hands both up to her lips and mouthing kisses across his fingers. She felt him shiver. “My point is that John loved you long before I ever showed up on the scene, and he has continued to love you with the kind of passion that people like us should only get to dream about in secret. My point is that John’s proven himself capable of impossible things when it comes to his heart. This is just one more.” And she let her mouth linger on his hands, then, raising up her eyes to see him staring down at her with a mixture of curiosity and want and lingering sadness. 

“John’s moral code is above reproach, Mary,” he sighed, twisting his fingers so that they curled around hers. She suppressed a pleased little whimper at this more intimate touch. “And he also happens to have a bit of a thing about saving me from myself. The first night we knew each other—“ 

“He killed a man who he thought was going to hurt you,” she interrupted him, squeezing his fingers between her own. “And do you know why he did that, Sherlock?” He did not answer her. He just continued to stare rather expressionlessly at a point slightly to the left of her neck. 

“He killed a man that first night to protect you, Sherlock. Ever since he’s known you, he’s wanted to keep you safe. Now, John might not have your super-brain, but he’s no idiot. I’m willing to bet that he’s smart enough to know that any noble self-sacrificing bullshit Mycroft might plant in his head would hurt you irreparably. He will not do that. Not the John I know. He won’t.” 

A tiny twitch at the corners of Sherlock’s mouth told her that her words were getting through, though he did not react any more visibly to her statement. Instead, he brought their hands up close to his face and began a minute study of the gun calluses on her left hand.  
After a few moments of this, where Mary struggled between her desire to stay here in this intimate moment with Sherlock and her increasingly urgent need to get off her knees, he seemed to come back to himself and stood. 

“You shouldn’t be kneeling on the floor, you imbecile. Why put more strain on your joints than absolutely necessary? You’re already the size of a bus.”

“Thanks very much, you dick,” she grumbled, though the gentleness with which he led her to the couch and sat down beside her, gazing at her solicitously as he rubbed at her knees through her jeans, took away the sting of his words. 

They were silent for a few minutes. Sherlock continued to rub at her knees, eventually pulling her feet up and into his lap so that he could more easily access the entirety of her lower legs. She sighed, delighted, as his long violinist’s hands worked at the tight muscles of her calves before moving to her ankles and feet. 

“I don’t understand you, Mary,” he finally murmured, not looking at her. Mary, for her part, had had her eyes closed and was thoroughly enjoying Sherlock’s ministrations when his voice cut through her blissful little bubble. She opened her eyes and raised her head to look at him inquiringly. He blushed, slightly. 

“You seem entirely fine with the fact that John and I just had rather a marathon shag, despite the fact that he is your husband and that you are carrying his child. It was you who made it clear that that was how we were to spend our time… why? I was under the impression that marriage is understood to be a two-person, entirely monogamous state, and yet…”

“Yeah, that might be—for people who aren’t us,” she interjected, rolling her eyes. “John and I both tried damn hard to be other than what we are, Sherlock, and we just… we really were bollocks at it. In a way, it’s lucky we found each other—no innocent normal people were harmed in the insane making of this relationship, that way.”

“Be that as it may, it still seems fairly far outside the normal parameters of the institution to—“

“Oh, Sherlock, darling, don’t give me that. You’ve solved enough murders where the motive was infidelity, right?” He nodded, closing his mouth abruptly as she cut him off with uncharacteristic vigor. She needed him to understand this. Now. “I don’t think human animals are built for loving only one other person for their entire lives. We see them every day, the consequences of that line of thinking. People thinking they love one another until someone else comes along, and they love that other person, too, but it’s outside the rules we’ve set, so it’s bad and evil and dishonest and it ends up being only painful for everyone involved. I for one think it’s utter shit, to restrict the number of people you love. Love’s wonderful. I never thought I’d get to find out, and now that I have, I sure as hell don’t want to ignore those feelings just because they’re for someone other than the man I married.”

Oh. Bugger. 

Sherlock was looking at her with such intensity in his gaze that she felt her face flush even hotter than it had a moment ago, when she’d realized her inadvertent confession. 

“So. You have. Feelings? Love feelings? For someone who isn’t John.”

“Quite the detective, you are,” whispered Mary, gazing down at the place where his hand still rested on top of her foot. “Better than me, anyway. I didn’t figure it out until you’d already got on that plane yesterday.”

She waited, not daring to look at him. She was very aware of all the places he was touching her: his hand on the top of her feet, his thighs beneath her calves, the absent stroking of his thumb across her anklebone. 

“I didn’t particularly realize it myself until John pointed it out to me that night,” he finally broke the silence. He still wasn’t looking at her, but as Mary’s head snapped up, wanting to know what he meant by that, she could see the blush creeping across his high cheekbones. 

“He’d put it together, I think. What I felt about you. I hadn’t really known what to call it. As a rule, I don’t really connect with women. Well, as a rule, I don’t really connect with people of any gender—“ she giggled at this, and he finally looked up at her, smiling shyly. “So I didn’t draw the right conclusion. All I knew is that you were… magnetic. Clever, and funny, and mean and… fascinating. Even after the whole,” he gestured vaguely to his chest, and she winced, “I couldn’t find it to hate you. You’d allowed me to have John back in some capacity, and I’d been sure that I’d lost him. That even in trying to keep him safe I would have to let him go… again.” 

Sherlock’s smile was slightly tremulous, and Mary was reminded forcefully that he was scared to death of what would transpire once John came back from his chat with Mycroft. She wanted nothing more than to pull him close, pet his hair, try to convey through their closeness that everything would turn out okay. 

So that’s what she did. 

Sherlock stiffened a little as she began to pull on the sleeve of his suit jacket, but after one look at her face, and the love she was making no effort to hide, he came willingly, snuggling up against her side and burying his face in her neck. 

“You smell nice,” he sighed, his breath causing a warm damp spot to form beneath her ear. “Different. What is it?”

“Went to one of those ‘build-your-own-fragrance’ places after… after,” she murmured. “Every time I smelled the old stuff it was like remembering that night… it made me sick every time I tried to put it on. Nauseous.”

“Increased olfactory sensitivity is to be expected during pregnancy,” he protested. “That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the night you shot me.”

Mary winced and pulled him closer. She knew they had to talk about this now, before John came in and they had entirely different problems, but it didn’t stop her from being terrified to know that it was inevitable. 

She’d tried so hard to just leave it all behind them. While Sherlock had been recovering from his wound, she’d been as helpful as she could be—as John would let her be—and just tried to move past it. Sherlock hadn’t seemed resentful at all. He still didn’t, in fact. But Mary knew that if they were going to make this… whatever it was going to be between the three of them work, there could be no room for insecurities or festering resentments. It’d destroy them before they’d even begun. 

She took a deep, slightly unsteady breath. “Sherlock…”

“Mary, it honestly isn’t necessary,” he breathed quietly, his chin still resting in the hollow above her collarbone. “I beyond anyone should be able to understand the desperate things one will do for love of John Watson.”

“No, Sherlock. I have to say this,” she said, her breath still shaky. “When I heard your voice behind me that night… I just. I have never been more terrified in my whole life. It’s like my mind went blank when I heard you. And I couldn’t think. I just knew I had to keep John. If I’d shot him—Magnussen—then, both you and John would be implicated. I panicked, and I shot without considering the consequences. I should have hit your shoulder, or your leg. I just…”

The tight sob cut her off, and she sat trying to force the hysterical crying back down her throat. Sherlock hadn’t moved his head from her shoulder, but his hands came up from where they rested in his lap. One moved to the back of her head to tangle in her hair, and the other wrapped itself as far as possible around her midsection to pull their bodies yet closer together. 

Mary fought to get herself under control again, concentrating on the feeling of Sherlock’s hand stroking gently through her hair. It felt nice. Intimate in that comfortable way that didn’t demand anything more. She sighed deeply, letting the scent of him fill her lungs, and continued in a voice rougher still than she would have liked. 

“I spent that whole night just sobbing and clutching my phone. I couldn’t go to hospital until John called, and he didn’t for hours and hours and I was just sitting there not knowing if you were dead or not. If I killed you,” and her voice broke again, and she felt Sherlock press reassuringly into her neck, leaving a tiny impression of lips on her collarbone. 

“And I was terrified. More afraid than I’ve ever been, and it wasn’t just because I was sure I’d lose John if he lost you—seriously Sherlock, he wouldn’t have survived that again. It was also that I didn’t want to be in a world without you, once I knew the world with you. You’re fascinating and brilliant and sweet, even though you never let that show, and you’re beautiful… I just. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for putting you through that. For putting you both through that. And I’ll never be able to understand why you both don’t just leave me to rot and go have the life you deserve together.”

Sherlock was quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that Mary’s pulse began to race faster. Perhaps he was actually considering that suggestion. Not that she’d blame him; she wouldn’t really be able to blame either he or John if they decided that she wasn’t worth the pain she’d already caused them. Even if she promised them both to do everything possible to keep them safe until she died, they might decide that, now that they knew how they felt about each other, she would be superfluous. 

And then she’d be alone again. 

Sherlock must have felt her pulse spike against his lips at her neck, because he finally moved. Lifting his head from her shoulder, he turned slightly so that their faces were only inches apart. His ridiculous eyes were serious as he gazed into hers, and Mary thought hysterically of hypnotism as he blinked slowly at her. They stayed this way for what felt like ages, with Sherlock’s eyes flicking over her features as if deducing every fear and insecurity she had. She felt raw. Exposed. And really, there was nothing for it but to let him see it all. She owed him that much, at least. 

She was so lost in her swirling thoughts that when the gentle pressure on the back of her head began to move her forward, she put up no resistance. Sherlock’s lips were warm against hers as he tilted his head to lock them more comfortably together. 

Mary suppressed a little whimper as she began to kiss him back—so different from kissing John. Sherlock’s lips were smooth and full, and when she felt the swipe of his tongue against her mouth and opened to him with a little gasp, he tasted like tea and toothpaste and perhaps the tiniest bit of John, all wrapped up in his own unique flavor. 

It should have been strange, kissing Sherlock Holmes, thought Mary giddily as she brought a hand up to the back of his neck to play with the curls there. She’d half-expected lightning to crash or the fire to blaze up, or a unicorn to come trotting into the front room. But it was like kissing any other bloke. Sherlock had no spikes or lasers to keep her at bay; just soft lips and warm hands and the pleased little sounds he made in the back of his throat when she moved her kisses down his long neck. 

He allowed her a few moments to taste the pale skin of his throat before he brought their mouths back together, his movements decidedly less gentle than they had been before. 

Well, she thought, as her hand tangled more completely into the curls at the back of his head. It was almost like kissing a regular bloke. Except for Sherlock Holmes was bloody incredible at it. 

She should have guessed.

They broke apart, finally, both a little out of breath. Sherlock’s eyes were dark as he looked at her, and she felt a little dazed as she gazed back at him, unsure of what to say. 

He broke the silence. “I forgive you, Mary. John forgives you. We are not leaving. You’re with us, now.”

He didn’t say it like a grand declaration, or a boon he was granting. He simply said it in the voice he used to observe everyday facts. The tea is ready. We’re out of milk. I forgive you for very nearly killing me and taking me away from the love of my life.

She couldn’t stop the tears now, and she didn’t try. She let them fall in relief and remorse, and vowed silently to herself that she would live every day of her life trying to deserve his forgiveness and his love. 

“There’s just one thing I need to say, and we’ll let the matter rest forever between us,” he murmured, brushing a thumb across her cheek to gather her tears. “One thing, Mary, and then it’s over.”

She nodded, her stomach clenching back into fearfulness at the serious, almost sad look in his eyes. 

“When I was in hospital, I remember you coming to see me,” he began, not looking her in the eye now. “I was just coming round, and I guess I must have been pretty out of it, but I remember you being there.”

She nodded. “John had gone to get a cup of coffee. It was the first time he’d left your side since they let him see you.”

“I remember you insisting that I couldn’t tell him that it had been you who shot me,” he said, his voice soft, not accusatory. “You said that he could never find out.”

Mary’s heart sank. “Yeah,” she whispered, suddenly very interested in the pattern of her oversized sweater. “Yeah, I said that. I was scared, like I told you. I knew that John wouldn’t ever forgive me for lying to him, so—“ 

“So you decided to lie to him some more,” cut in Sherlock, in a gentler tone than she thought him capable of. “And that’s where I’ve got a problem, Mary. The lying. You and I do it so well, and whenever we’ve done it to protect John, we’ve only ended up hurting him. Now, if we’re going to embark on some mutual relationship, honesty will be paramount.”

“You’ve been reading Cosmo again, haven’t you?” she quipped, trying to lighten the mood. 

“I’m perfectly serious, Mary,” he said, not even acknowledging her stupid joke. “We will need to be honest, and no one of us will be able to keep secrets from the other two. It’ll be hard for you and me, since we’ve lived with such big secrets for so long… it’s like second nature for us to lie, now. But if we really are to love each other and live in such a way that we can all get what we want… I will not ever lie for you. Nor will I ask you to do so for me.”

She looked into his face, which was so earnest and without malice, and felt her fear melt even a little more. This was so far outside his comfort zone, and yet, here he was nevertheless. She smiled at him softly, bringing their mouths back together for a chaste, lingering kiss. 

“I will try everyday to be as honest as I can be with both you and John,” she murmured, flexing her fingers in his hair. “And I will never ask you to lie for me, ever again. I’ll try to always trust you enough to tell you the truth.”

He smiled softly at her then, and kissed her once more before settling back into the sofa with her head on his chest. They were quiet for long moments, listening to the crackling of the fire, before Mary lifted her head again to look into Sherlock’s face. 

“Since we’re being honest and everything, want to tell me what you meant by ‘did his usual Mycroft thing’?”

Sherlock looked down at her with a mildly annoyed expression on his face. “Is it really that important how my brother enforces his will, Mary?”

“Honesty, Sherlock.”

He heaved a long-suffering sigh that made her head move with his chest. “Fine. He blackmails me with a stunt I pulled as a child. Mummy never found out about it, but if she ever did, I’m reasonably sure that you would not be able to find my body. Mycroft only ever mentions it in case of emergencies. But it is regrettably effective.”

“Come on, then! What was it you did?”

He shook his head vigorously. “Someday, if you’re very good, I might tell you. Suffice it to say that it involved some chickens, paraffin wax, and an awful lot of property damage that I managed to successfully blame on wandering vagabonds.”

She giggled and snuggled closer into his chest. “Christ. I can just picture it. With my luck, this kid is going to impossibly take after you, isn’t she?”

Mary couldn’t see Sherlock’s face from her current position, but she closed her eyes to savor the sound of his deep chuckle as it vibrated against her cheek.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft and John have a friendly chat at the Diogenes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of love Mycroft. 
> 
> I think he's this SUPER interesting character, because he's like Sherlock, if Sherlock had never met John and had chosen power as his drug of choice rather than cocaine. I think he genuinely does care about his little brother, and we've seen how sentimental he can get about Sherlock quite a few times, especially in this last season ("Your loss would break my heart"?!?!? Come on!). 
> 
> I think their relationship is one of the more intriguing secondary relationships in the show, because there is SO much history there, and Sherlock obviously looks up to him (see: Mycroft's position of authority in Sherlock's mind palace). I think that if Sherlock were ever to get into any kind of romantic relationship with anyone, a conversation like this wouldn't be far off. Since it's John, and since John is married, and since Mycroft has some fairly traditional views of that old song and dance... it was inevitable, wasn't it? 
> 
> Again, this isn't beta'd or anything... I just write it when I get bored to entertain myself and keep from shooting the wall. :) Enjoy!

John felt his heart sink as he met Mycroft’s level gaze through half-down window of the car. The look on the other man’s face wasn’t precisely unfriendly, but John suddenly understood with clarity he’d never had before just why people called Sherlock’s brother the Ice Man. 

“Piss off, Mycroft,” said John levelly, beginning to walk down Baker Street toward the tube that would take him to his and Mary’s place. He did not look back, staring intently ahead of him as he fought to keep his pace steady and even. He did not want to appear as though he was running away from Mycroft Holmes, who was, after all, just another man. 

Hell, John had seen Sherlock pin his brother’s arm behind his back and slam him into a wall hard enough to crack ribs. And if Sherlock could do it, John certainly could. 

He could sense the car next to him, its shiny black metal catching the light of the streetlamps in his peripheral vision. He studiously ignored it, shoving his hands deep into his pockets to combat against the January chill. 

“John, you are being unreasonable. There is no reason for you to continue in discomfort when I can very easily transport you back to your flat without the inconvenience of the underground.”

“I’m almost positive I told you to piss off.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Mycroft, and his voice was a close to a growl as John had ever come out of the posh git. “Dr. Watson, you and I are going to have this conversation, even if I must use physical force to make it so.”

John snorted. “I’d like to see you try, Mycroft. Now get your pointy nose out of my business and—“ 

Before John could finish his sentence, Mycroft had flung open the door of the slowly trundling car and had stepped out with more grace than all of John’s previous experience would have suggested him capable of. He didn’t even have time to react before Mycroft had both his elbows neatly pinned behind his back and had slammed his chest up against the now-stationary vehicle. 

“Just because I don’t make a habit of legwork doesn’t mean I’m not perfectly capable of it when the moment requires, Doctor.” Mycroft’s voice was perfectly amiable once again, close by John’s ear as he twisted in a futile attempt to escape. Mycroft’s grip tightened once—a warning—before he spoke again. 

“Now. Doctor Watson. You requested that I keep my nose out of your business. Regrettably, your business of late seems to concern my brother rather centrally, which has made your business into my business. If you would, please, get in the car, then we can continue this conversation in a more comfortable venue.”

John’s ears were burning with embarrassment, and he wished very dearly that he could simply slam his head back into Mycroft’s nose and be done with it. However, the strength in the hands still gripping his forearms told him that it might not be his best idea, and so he simply gave a curt nod and began moving in the direction of the still-open back door. Mycroft gave a pleased hum before letting go of John and following him gracefully into the car, crossing one long leg over the other and looking thoroughly composed. 

“Drink?” he asked, gesturing towards the several crystal decanters that glinted in the low recessed lighting of the car. 

John shook his head, trying to regain some of the dignity that had been thoroughly bruised by Mycroft’s unexpected use of force. He gazed at the elder Holmes brother expectantly, his hands resting loosely in his lap, and quirked an eyebrow. 

“I was under the impression that you had something to say.”

“Yes,” mused Mycroft, helping himself to a brandy. “But I think I would prefer not to be in an enclosed space with you to say it, especially when you’re in such an intransigent mood. I think I shall wait to say my piece until we have reached our destination.”

“Oh, goody,” sighed John, rolling his eyes. “Another abandoned factory, then? Surely you’re sick of that Maltese Falcon shit with me, Mycroft. You should know by now that it doesn’t work.”

Mycroft simply pursed his lips in a slightly unpleasant smile and said nothing, sipping his drink and staring out the window while John sat with his back straight and away from the seat, staring out the car’s back window onto the flashing lights of the London night. 

Finally, the car slowed smoothly to a halt. Not in front of a derelict building or parking garage, but in front of the gracious Victorian façade of the Diogenes Club. Mycroft swung open the door and unfolded his long body out into the open air, grabbing his ubiquitous umbrella as he went, and leaving John to scramble out with decidedly less grace. 

Mycroft strode easily from the car, up the stone steps in through the large wooden doors of the club. He did not look back to see that John was following him, although he was. He tugged on the hem of his jumper and felt, as he had before on the very few occasions he’d set foot in Mycroft’s home-from-home: slightly too frumpy and plebian to be allowed.

But no, he thought, frowning defiantly and forcing his fidgeting hands to his sides. That’s precisely what Mycroft wanted, wasn’t it? If John felt lowly and out of place in the splendor of the Diogenes, he was much more likely to capitulate to whatever overbearing, invasive demand the posh fucker was about to hand down. Throw your opponent off-balance. Home field advantage.

Well, John would be damned if he’d let Mycroft’s little mind games get the better of him.

Squaring his shoulders and letting his body fall into the long-held habits of military posture, John followed Mycroft through the silent, winding hallways of the old manse, affecting an expression of what he hoped was polite boredom.

Finally, they arrived at Mycroft’s private office, and John was ushered inside the room that smelled of leather and fountain pen ink and luxury. Without being directed, he strode across the office to the fireplace, which was lit and glowing warmly against the cold night outside, and sunk into one of the soft leather armchairs before it. He turned in his seat, looking up at Mycroft expectantly.

“Space big enough for you now, Mycroft? Let’s get to it, if you don’t mind. I’ve got rather better things to do than sit for hours and be disapproved-at by you.”

“And what might those better things be, Doctor Watson?” Mycroft’s voice was icy cold, having lost all of its politic blandness since the door to the office had closed behind him, blocking out any witnesses. “Returning home to your killer wife and her spawn? Playing happy families during the week and then ‘shagging’ my brother at the weekend?”

It took everything that John had in him not to leap out of his chair and straight for Mycroft’s throat. He knew that the other man would mark his whitened knuckles where they gripped at the arms of the chair, would see the unwilling clench of his jaw and the stiffening of his neck, but he kept his voice as calm as possible when he replied.

“Is that what you’re thinking, Mycroft? That I think Sherlock is just an easy lay on the side?”

“He’s loved you for years, Doctor. Surely you’re not obtuse enough not to have noticed. With everything that Sherlock has done for you since the days of your first acquaintance, I believe that, when it comes to you, at least, he would be the easiest of ‘lays’.”

John bit his lips together, trying to hold in the admonition that Mycroft stop talking about Sherlock as though he were a child. He sat in silence for several long moments, staring into the fire and ignoring the imposingly tall figure leaning against the mantle and watching him with eyes that could freeze the Thames.

At last, he spoke, still not looking at Mycroft.

“I know Sherlock’s in love with me. He’s told me as much, and I believe him. You’re right that he’d do just about anything for me. Hell, he already has, hasn’t he? And I know that I could probably take advantage of that, if I wanted, and that he’d make do with whatever I thought to give him and be grateful.”

Mycroft growled again, his hand on the mantle clenching hard into a fist, as though he desperately wished to break John’s jaw and stop him talking for the foreseeable future.

“But you’re only seeing, Mycroft. You’re not observing. You’re theorizing without all the facts, I think, and jumping to conclusions that aren’t the right ones.” John took a small amount of pride in the way Mycroft’s back stiffened, affronted at having Sherlock’s language spoken to him from John’s mouth. “What you’re failing to realize is that all of that stuff is true for me, too. I love Sherlock. Maybe I have all along, and just didn’t want to realize it. But I know it now, and I’ve told him, and he believes me. And I know to the very core of my being that, if he asked me, I would do just about anything to make him happy.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed, pointedly coming to rest on the wedding ring glinting on John’s left hand.

“Including leave your wife and child behind? Go back to Baker Street and make tea and trot around after Sherlock solving crimes? I think not, Doctor. Now that they are in your life, you will never leave the family you’ve always wanted. Abusive, alcoholic father. Emotionally distant mother. Sister whose coping mechanisms have destroyed her life. You have a chance to start again and make a new family for yourself, and you will never give that up.”

“No,” conceded John, still gazing into the flickering fire. “I want a family. That’s true enough. I want to see my daughter born and love her and watch her grow up. I want to wake up with my insane wife every morning, and I want to get old with her and bitch about how young and strong we used to be. I want Christmas and birthdays and first days of school, and I am not ashamed to admit that. You’ll never make me feel ashamed of loving them, Mycroft. So don’t try.”

Mycroft’s face had frozen. It was a good job that there was no precedent for a human glare melting kidneys, thought John wryly, because if there had been, he would surely be a goner.

“How can you sit there and tell me—“

“But I want Sherlock there for all of that,” John continued, stepping on the end of Mycroft’s angry hiss. “I want him there to obsessively measure and catalogue our daughter’s every milestone. I want him to teach her how to deduce people and do experiments and play the violin.” He looked up at Sherlock’s older brother, who was suddenly watching him intently, as though trying to read his thoughts. “I want to watch his hair get grey and tease him about his snoring and argue with him about whose turn it is to do the dishes. I want him with me always, because I love him, and I will not live without him again.”

Apparently Mycroft heard something in John’s voice that made him want to hear him out, because he didn’t try to argue as John sat staring at him, daring him to question his sincerity.

“You told me, the first time we met, that I missed the war,” he said, his voice softer as he stared at Mycroft, willing him to understand. “Well, you had me pegged even then, Mycroft. I like danger and I like chasing criminals and no matter how hard I wish, I’m never going to be just some ordinary bloke. I’m pretty fucked up in a lot of ways, but by some miracle I’ve found two people who love me anyway, and they’re just fucking unbelievable enough that they want to me to be happy, in spite of everything.”

Mycroft was staring at John, his eyes having lost their fury to be replaced by something closer to shock. His gaze flickered all over John, trying to find some evidence of falsehood in the set of his shoulders, the twist of his mouth. Apparently, he couldn’t find any, and so settled for swallowing hard and standing up straighter, unable, it seemed, to meet John’s eyes.

“You are saying that you and Sherlock and Mrs. Watson are choosing to embark on a polyamorous romantic association,” he stated, with the same voice he might have used to read out stock reports.

“I love them both. They love me. They even love each other, if you can believe it,” said John, grinning at the look of patent disbelief on Mycroft’s face. “Doesn’t surprise me all that much, I suppose. They’re both brilliant and beautiful and terrifying in such complimentary ways… must be like finding another lion in a world full of housecats.”

Mycroft’s lips twitched, and he turned his eyes away from John, who grinned, pleased at having made Mycroft understand, even just a bit.  
“And I’m not sure what exactly everything is going to look like going forward, because that’s what we were supposed to be discussing together before you decided to pull this James Bond crap on me again,” continued John, letting his frustration with Mycroft’s methods color his voice. Sherlock’s brother had the good grace to look ashamed. “I can’t tell you exactly what either of them will want, but I can tell you what I wish for out of my life, Mycroft. And it’s Sherlock. And Mary. And the family I think we can be together. I love them, and I’ll spend the rest of my time on this earth making sure they never doubt it.”

It felt good to say it out loud, thought John. To say to a witness what he’d known in his heart since Mary had told him that a man could have faith in more than one thing. When Sherlock had begun to kiss him back that first night on the airfield, the fluttering, fragile hope had galvanized into something harder than steel, but saying it to Mycroft made it real in a way it hadn’t been before now. All he wanted to do was run out of this building and home to them, and make the declaration to the people who really mattered. He couldn’t help the happy grin that suddenly split his face.

Mycroft was watching him with something akin to wonder. John quirked a questioning eyebrow at him, and he quickly brought his face back under his control.

“I…” and it was immensely gratifying to see the implacable Mycroft Holmes lost for words. John settled back in his chair, content to wait until Mycroft gathered his thoughts. It was a few minutes during which Mycroft’s throat worked convulsively, and Sherlock would never believe it when John told him his older brother had almost cried.

“Well,” he finally got out, his voice cool and under control once again. “I’ll just have the car return you to them before it gets inordinately late, then, shall I?”

John nodded at him, levering himself out of the chair and stretching. The thing was stupidly comfortable, and probably cost more than a month’s rent at Baker Street. He began walking across the shining hardwood floors toward the doors, expecting that Mycroft would follow him.

“John.”

It was the first time Mycroft had used his given name since Christmas—before he’d become an accessory to a murder that Sherlock committed. Mycroft had kept to his title since then, always pronouncing it rather pointedly, as though hoping to distance himself emotionally from John by dint of mere semantics. Hearing his name on Mycroft’s lips, therefore, made him pause and look back over his shoulder in surprise. 

Mycroft was looking at a point just to the left of John’s ear. He never had a problem looking people directly in the eye, and yet it seemed he couldn’t quite manage it just now. He cleared his throat and straightened his cuffs, before speaking in a voice filled with more feeling than John had ever heard him use. 

“I… thank you. I told you once that I worry about Sherlock. Constantly, I think I said.” John nodded, remembering that first meeting, the first involuntary kidnapping, the abandoned building. 

“Since he’s met you, I. I worry less. Not that either of you is a paragon of virtue, of course, but you. Suit each other. Better than any two people I’ve ever heard of. So I sleep better at night knowing he has you. That you have each other. And while I might not understand precisely the appeal of your… arrangement,” John lifted an eyebrow in warning, and Mycroft raised a placatory hand. “If it means that you will still be with him, and he you, I suppose that I am glad of it.”

It was more expansive than Mycroft had ever been on the subject of feelings, and John couldn’t really think of anything to say in response to it. He settled for simply nodding and giving Mycroft a tiny smile as he turned to leave, already trying to figure out how he’d ever get Sherlock to refrain from taking the piss once he’d told him about this conversation. 

He was halfway out the door when Mycroft spoke again. 

“Oh, and Doctor Watson?”

Oh. So they were standing on formality again. Delightful. He stuck his head back in the door, to find Mycroft sitting in the other wingback chair, his eyes on the fire and his hands held before his lips as if in prayer. It was in moments like this that he could most clearly see the resemblance between Sherlock and his brother. Mycroft didn’t look at him as he spoke. 

“I suppose it goes without saying that if you hurt him in any way, there are a number of government operatives specializing in various creative modes of torture who answer directly to me. And that I will only deploy them after I have finished with you personally.”

The threat shouldn’t have made John feel warm in the pit of his stomach, or bring an affectionate smile to his face. But, as he’d told Mycroft only minutes earlier, he was rather screwed up in a lot of interesting ways. 

“Understood, Mycroft. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, John.”


End file.
